bugmenot, dont get me wrong – great idea.
Maybe the gov could drop the price of new blocks of land some 10k-20k for the sake of the environemnt over profit?
It’s not like it cost them anything in the first place, so surely no need to HAVE to sell it at market value.

(bugmenot: “I think it (solar panels) should be mandatory for every new dwelling built (including knock-down rebuilds in existing suburbs”)

hax: People cant afford houses as it is, lets make it even harder for JUST that portion of the population. What a thinker.

I’m not talking about a complete system to power an entire house (ie. off-grid). I’m talking about a small array (lets say 2-3 panels) on EVERY new home and have it grid-connected.

The array will pay for itself over several years and at the rate of new houses going up around Canberra, you’ll have a solar farm 10x the size of anything they can propose in a single array.

I’m not talking about spending the likes of $14K per home. I agree that a system of that magnitude would push the price of houses up an out of the affordable range.

Solar is a very viable alternative to alleviate our desire to burn coal. The government doesn’t like to push anything that they can’t have a piece in taxing per unit of consumed energy (hence why they would prefer a centralised array/farm over a distributed system). Same goes for Actew, they want to charge per unit and they don’t like the thought of people making their own power, so there’s no incentive for them to push it.

How about all the new office buildings in the city, why is every one of them not sporting a solar farm on their rooftop? It won’t provide 100% of their energy needs, but it’ll certainly lower the draw on the grid (particularly during daytime/business hours when it’s needed most).

(bugmenot: “I think it (solar panels) should be mandatory for every new dwelling built (including knock-down rebuilds in existing suburbs”)

People cant afford houses as it is, lets make it even harder for JUST that portion of the population. What a thinker.
You could exclude first home buyers and the like, but then, thats not really an actual (long term) solution is it.

Whatever it is should be an Ausralia-wide / everybody pays solution. Im sure the ACT will want to push forward and try to be an ‘island’ unto its own, but whats the use of a small % of wealthy population being clean while others are too poor to do good by the environment? — they need to pull out some Grand-Scale infastructure i think.

I hope some more thought is put into this before a disasterous amount of money is spent on the WRONG solution (whatever that could be ..)